Error Analysis Of English Attributive Clauses By Senior High School Students

English Attributive Clause is very important among the English knowledge that is often tested in College Entrance Examination in China, so English teachers have paid much attention to it. Though they spend much time in teaching it and students do a lot of exercises, many students still find it hard to avoid errors, let alone master it. What is the nature of these errors? Why do students make errors? Error analysis can answer these questions.So far just a few scholars have applied Error Analysis theory to the study of attributive clause. Based on Error Analysis theory, this thesis aims to study what kinds of errors senior high students often make in the learning of attributive clause, why they make these errors and how to handle with them in learning and teaching. Participants in this study are 82 students from a senior high school in Nanjing. The author assigned them to a test about English attributive clause and then these students and another 30 teachers from senior high schools in Nanjing were involved in the questionnaire survey. After collecting and sorting the tests and questionnaires, by quantitative and qualitative analysis, the author finds that students' errors mainly include errors of using relative pronouns and relative adverbs, errors of omission of relatives, errors of agreement between the main clause and subordinate clause in attributive clauses, errors of redundancy in attributive clauses and so on. Students make these errors mainly because they focus too much attention on the form and apply English rules mechanically without thinking about the meaning and context of language; students might ignore or forget rules of attributive clauses because they lack comprehensive knowledge of English language so they can not learn it well; not having enough knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary, students can not understand the sentences with attributive clauses; they do not get used to attributive clause because of language transfer.According to the analysis, this thesis puts forward some suggestions:on one hand, teachers should enhance students' learning of basic knowledge of English; the teaching of grammar should be much more comprehensive and systematical; teachers must provide students help and encourage them to use good learning strategies; they should strengthen the input and output to improve students'English thinking. On the other hand, students need to do self-reflection to find their weakness in learning and try to improve their basic knowledge of English; they are supposed to adopt correct attitude towards English study and learn to use learning strategies with the help of teachers.